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Jerry Brown’s bullet train is finally dead

Munchkin: As Coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her, and she’s not only merely dead, she’s really most sincerely dead.

Chris Reed, writing for Cal Watchdog has the best take on the recent death of Jerry Brown’s Bullet Train discusses their last hope — that the ChiComs might step in to save the High-Speed Rail project because of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s visit to Beijing a few years ago:

…it didn’t happen in 2010 and I struggle to see any way it could happen now. For all the obvious reasons: $25 billion is a huge gift for anyone, even an economic superpower; it wouldn’t play well domestically in China, where a rising middle class would prefer the money be spent to reduce pollution and gridlock; it could backfire on PR grounds if critics portrayed it as a wealthy nation being played for a fool by an even-wealthier nation. But there’s also this: After all the insanity of the past five years from the California High-Speed Rail Authority — the lies, the deceit, the self-delusion, the braying and bluster of authority board chair Dan Richard — who on Earth would want to be the authority’s partner? Beijing is not dumb. Or at least not dumb enough to want to subsidize a project as ridiculously flawed as the California bullet train.

We agree with Reed, a former editorialist for the Register and now also writing for the San Diego Union-Tribune, that this thing really is DEAD, DEAD and DEAD. Reed also wrote this great editorial in the SDUT today: Bullet-train fiasco: Gov. Brown, heed the judge.

Despite the chest pounding from the CAHSR’s CEO, Jeff Morales (“officials are confident they can address the judge’s concerns quickly”), not even the Great and Powerful Jerry Brown has a way out of this one. The money’s just not there, AND we’d think he’ll finally give up on the thing to prevent it from being a re-election issue next year (yes, he is running — Tim Donnelly confirmed that to us last week saying Brown had confirmed it to him).

John and Ken did a terrific interview with Michael Brady, one of the winning lawyers, on their KFI program yesterday. The discussion raised another valuable point that the $3.4 billion in Federal funds allocated to the project — that the government requires matched — has yet to be ponied up by Brown, CAHSR Chairman Dan Richard and Morales. Where was that money coming from? The program interviewed Howard Jarvis’ Jon Coupal this afternoon. Coupal was confident that the project won’t be breaking ground and is beyond redemption.